


this empty house

by stormwarnings



Series: like the dawn you broke the dark [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, after glaurung has eaten their father and killed their mother, character study of gil-galad to match the character study of finduilas, gil-galad and finduilas are the lord and lady of minas tirith and the pass of sirion, so finduilas goes to kill the dragon, so thats some context, some culture building bc i love to see it, this is literally just for me bc nobody is going to read it BUT I LOVE IT, this is part of a fix-it series except this one is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26978830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: Gil-galad did not want pity. Gil-galad would make do with what he had left.(circa FA 275)
Relationships: Ereinion Gil-Galad & Orodreth | Artaresto, Ereinion Gil-galad & Finduilas Faelivrin, Orodreth | Artaresto/Orodreth's Wife
Series: like the dawn you broke the dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963720
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	this empty house

**Author's Note:**

> this rlly kinda sucks and i rlly gotta finish the fic that accompanies this but like life is kicking my ass so yea

When they found Gil-galad’s mother, he did not cry.

Her body was crumpled on the ground. She had thrown herself from a window of the tower, towards the cobblestone road of Minas Tirith. She had hit the ground hard, and broken her neck, and died. Her golden hair, and her warm skin, and her favorite blue dress.

There was a smile on her face.

“My Lord,” a voice came.

“I am fine, Maukantya,” Gil-galad said. He blinked twice, and rubbed his ear, and turned to the gathered townspeople. “Go back to your homes,” he said gently. “A day of mourning, if it is not a bother, and tomorrow we shall continue to rebuild.”

The folk dispersed, murmuring and weeping. They gave Gil-galad a wide berth. He knew they pitied him. His father, dead of dragon maw. His mother, dead of her own will. His sister, dead (so they thought) or soon to be (so he knew).

Gil-galad did not want pity. Gil-galad would make do with what he had left.

“We will get rid of the body, dear,” Maukantya said softly. She had been the captain of the guard for as long as Gil-galad had been alive. She had always been kind, and had loved the two little twin heirs just as most in the town had – fiercely and deeply.

Gil-galad nodded. He bowed, pressing his hands to his chest. “Her Sindarin rites, if you would.”

Maukantya nodded, sadness in her own eyes.

Gil-galad turned away. He knew what they would do, as all the townsfolk did, this odd mesh of Noldor and Sindar who had learned each other’s ways and loved each other’s families. Their small walled town, which thrived only because of the small farms that had settled amongst the singular broad part of the valley. Their small walled town, built of stone and wariness and the watchtower always manned. Their small walled town, sat upon the silver river, looking down the valley of the green banks of the Sirion and the enormous rocky mountains that surrounded it. The cliffs and the sky and the snowmelt in the spring, and that was his mother’s way. She would be taken up and left, for her soul had already passed on, and now her body was an empty house. It would feed the birds and give back to the earth, in this harsh place where everything had to depend upon each other.

Gil-galad knew everyone in this town by name. Gil-galad knew everyone in this town had lost someone – to the journey across the Ice, to the orcs, to the dragon. None of them met his eyes.

Why, in Eru’s name, had he let Finduilas go? He should have kept her here. That was what his father would have done. (His father was dead, though.)

And of course, Gil-galad’s feet had unwittingly led him here, to the falconer’s mews, which had been his father and sister’s favorite place in the whole town. Gil-galad had always taken after his mother, riding and hunting and tearing his own home in this wild place. Finduilas too, had loved it, for its wildness, but she had been one to stand on the walls with her dress whipping in the wind, a gloved hand held out and a piercing whistle for the white falcon that flew above.

“Gwarbilin,” Gil-galad said softly when he entered the building, so as not to scare the elder.

“Hmph,” the other elf said, not softly, as one of the birds screeched. “She is not dead.”

“My mother?”

“No, little Lord’s ass, your sister.”

“Gwarbilin,” Gil-galad said, and sighed.

“There is no room in this place for that. Come, help, do not just stand there uselessly. We are taking your sister’s falcon out for a fly.”

Gil-galad and Finduilas had, long ago, been to their grandfather Finarfin’s kingdom in Nargothrond. The thing that had startled Gil-galad the most had been all the servants; the attendants, who followed his grandmother, the guards, who followed his grandfather, the maids and the cooks and the announcers, and Gil-galad had wondered how anybody there ever got a moment alone. He thanked Eru for the fact that here, in tiny Minas Tirith, there was not a legion of guards following him, nor relentless servants who would have to see the crochety old falconer bossing around their young Lord like a child again, as they walked across the bridge that connected the town to the rest of the river valley

“I always did like your sister better,” Gwarbilin said, fluttering around like his hooded birds.

Gil-galad sighed. “I know.”

“Self deprecation is no look for you, boy. I always did like your sister better, for I _understood_ her better. You are harder to place.”

Gil-galad blinked, and stepped back as Gwarbilin released the falcon. She flew fast and sudden, a graceful strength to her wings as they snapped out. For an instant, Gil-galad longed for those wings, and for an instant, it was as if he knew what it would feel like – the wind ruffling under the feathers, the powerful beat of the muscles in his back, stretching ever further for the stars which he was named.

“Careful, there,” Gwarbilin said, quiet and stern.

Gil-galad returned to himself, and straightened, and wiped the longing from his face.

“There it is,” Gwarbilin said, and sighed himself. “That’s the trouble with you maiar-born.”

“What?” Gil-galad asked.

Gwarbilin whistled, and whirled a lure in one hand, and the wind rushed by as the falcon snatched at it. She soared on the updrafts, and then higher, her feathers illuminated in the grey sky.

“Your body is a house.” Gwarbilin’s eyes were keen on Gil-galad’s face. “But you maiar-born never know how to stay in them.”

Gil-galad did not answer. There was always truth in Gwarbilin’s blunt statements. “You do not think she’s dead.”

“Little Finduilas? No.”

Gil-galad held his breath as he waited for Gwarbilin to go on.

“She’s raised that bird up there since it was an injured hatchling, and in any case Finduilas was more kin to those feathers than to many in the town.” Gwarbilin glanced back at Gil-galad. “Believe me when I say that she would know if Finduilas was gone.”

Gil-galad nodded, sharply. Something caught in his chest, like a thorn, like a breath of air in a fast-flowing river that one couldn’t quite reach.

“Do not weep,” Gwarbilin said irritably. “It does not become you.”

But Gil-galad was still gasping for the surface. He said, “Nothing in this place becomes me. It should not have been mine, nor Finduilas’s, for many decades. For many _centuries_.”

The falcon swooped by again. Gwarbilin said, “Everything has its path, young Lord. The river carves its course through stone; the moss on the mountains chokes and regrows. The bird builds her nest, and feeds her young, and always one will fall from the nest. Perhaps the elves of the light think that death cannot touch them, but we of the wild know – death and life are twins, and survival is the consequence of both.” The falcon flew back to his fist. “An empty house, and the next path.”

“Was this supposed to make me feel better?”

Gwarbilin scoffed. He was quiet for a minute, and then said, prickly like a burr, “You will be just as good a ruler as your father.”

“How do you know?”

“Because – hold this – you are not ruling alone.”

Gil-galad inclined his head.

Finduilas, the ever-present part of his life. Switching clothes, sometimes, to take each other’s lessons when they were young, though Gil-galad only ever wore Finduilas’s green dresses – none of the orange ones. Singing with their father and their mother, their mother’s cheerful voice and their father’s deep baritone, and Finduilas’s voice as deep as Gil-galad’s but lovelier. Finduilas took after Orodreth, and Gil-galad took after their mother, and that was always that except that it wasn’t, because the twins took after both their parents all the same, and that was all Gil-galad would ever be. Made up of patchwork parts of people who were no longer alive, save Finduilas. (If she came back alive.)

He needed her to come back alive.

“Watch the sky,” Gwarbilin said. “Your sister will find her way home.”

“I will,” Gil-galad responded. “But I must also watch the ground. We have to rebuild. We have to regain strength.”

“You cannot rebuild on unstable ground, little Lord.”

The sky was a constant, with the sharp greys and brilliant blues in equal turn. The seasons were a constant, the changing years in this harsh world. Finduilas was a constant, if she came home. Mother and father were a constant, until they weren’t, but Gil-galad had always made do with what he had, and here was what he had: a sword in his grip, and the feel of his father’s hands guiding him. A knife in his grip, and his mother teaching him to skin a rabbit with steady hands. The both of them, standing behind him, the fires lit and the sun setting, and the gold that gleamed in Finduilas’s braids like perhaps they were rulers of old, like perhaps they were a part of this noble family, like perhaps someday their stories would be told. And those, at least, were constants – for he was made of memories, and love, and that was all that was left.

“I won’t,” Gil-galad said.

**Author's Note:**

> check out my [tumblr](https://stormwarnings.tumblr.com/) :)


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